Red Meat & Old Eggs

Since the days of King Charles I England has had its Poet Laureate, given him a pension and two hogsheads of Canary wine (or its monetary equivalent). Last week it became known that the U. S. also has a practicing poet on its payroll. His name is J. Alvin Kugelmass, onetime contributor to Scribner's and the American Mercury and his pay is $19.23 a week, the CWA wage for research workers. Since he is a CWA worker employed not for the pleasure of his sovereign but for the social and economic welfare of the country, Administrator Hopkins detailed him to make poems that would teach English to New York City's immigrants and illiterates. Some of them appear in The American News, a paper published by the Language Research Institute and written entirely in a vocabulary of 900 easy words chosen by Director Elaine Swenson. Some of poet Kugelmass' work in the 900-word vocabulary:

Something there is . . .

That takes me from my house

To my old country . . .

I see again the little street,

The green houses on the way

To the water, the white bread,

Red fruit . . . my old mother . . .

Then--Here I am in America

My new country, where live

My new friends,

Now very dear to me

Here, too, is the bread well made

The water clean and the

Meat red. . . .

Here I can work and live . . .

Here in this country are

New things, new ways and

Thoughts, big houses, big

Like the men who made them

Here I can live and be happy.

Poet Kugelmass also earns his dole by writing verse inside a 300-word vocabulary:

A working woman has her house,

As nice as nice can be,

And cleans it every day so well,

It's beautiful to see A sleeping woman sits and sits,

Her house is always cold,

Her meat and coffee are no good

Her eggs are always old.

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